It's a 1.25-mile journey from Aquatic Park through frigid, current-swept waters to reach the tourist attraction. [...]

Aidan Moore, who works for Alcatraz City Cruises, said the coyote has been holed up near the parade grounds, where birds frequently nest. Bird carcasses have recently been found around the island, Moore said.

"He's certainly much fatter than when he arrived," said Moore. "We don't know how long he's going to be a resident here, because if he interferes with the nesting birds he might get relocated to the mainland." [...]

Kessler and a UC Berkeley researcher said the coyote likely left the mainland due to territorial pressure from the city's approximately 20 coyote family groups, each of which defends its turf against outsiders. With limited options for dispersing young coyotes -- about 30 are killed by cars in San Francisco each year -- this one apparently decided to strike out across the water.

Christopher Schell, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley who studies how carnivores adapt to urban environments, said coyotes rarely display this type of swimming endurance, but it's not unprecedented. He recalled reports of coyotes swimming up to three miles to islands from Seattle and Tacoma, Washington.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

The UN committee against torture has found Australia responsible for torture carried out in an immigration prison in Papua New Guinea on an immigrant that Australia paid Papua New Guinea to jail.

Australia pioneered the idea of denying asylum to refugees who arrive by small boat, no matter how repressive the country they escaped.

On the division of Iran's opposition between supporters of the son of the Shah and those who oppose him.

The bully is trying to bully Europe with tariffs into acquiescing to his demand to sell Greenland to him. Now European countries are moving towards uniting for confrontation with him.

I don't think that the bully cares very much about Greenland. I think his real goal is to make Europe submit to him, using a demand chosen to be outrageous and threats chosen to be daunting.

Past experience suggests that if he sees that he won't gain the submission he seeks, he will back off — for a while.

Unjustified killings by the deportation thugs are not anomalies, and not the result of agents with insufficient training. They are part of how the agency was meant to operate.

I agree with the demand that everyone facing deportation have the right to a lawyer to defend per. Deportation is usually exile for life, yet because it is not legally considered a punishment, it can be imposed with less protection than a month in jail.

The writer describes the sense of liberation of deactivating his ex-Twitter account.

Or perhaps nowadays should we call it "shitter"?

Scientists disagree about measurements of microplastics in human bodies. By studying the conflicting results, they will find methods to work out the correct facts.

Magats in the Pentagon plan to make the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes, follow the strict party line.

*Rushed laws after a tragedy are "never good", warns father [and mother] of youngest [Bondi Beach mass shooting] victim.* They show wisdom by resisting the temptation to go overboard into their own loss and preferring that society choose the best response.

In the same way, a law named (even unofficially) after a person who suffered injustice tends to be insufficiently thought out.

*US cities [are] increasingly compelled to police abuses by [deportation thugs]* because the officials in charge of the deportation thugs encourage them to commit crimes against the public.

US citizens: call on Apple and Google to stop censoring apps — and let users freely release and install free/libre apps.

See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.

Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:

Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)

For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.

Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.

Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.

Feel free to send your own:

Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable

You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.

Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.

I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.

If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.

To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.

I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.

(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)

I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first.

Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.

Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.

Patreon, YOU HAD ONE JOB.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

• Pluribus (2025):
  Holy crap is this great. Rhea Seehorn is a treasure. I've watched it twice all the way though and loved it both times.

• TRON Ares (2025):
  As expected, Jared Leto ruins everything. This was terrible. But it was not as terrible as I expected. Let's say that on the "Hellraiser" scale, I expected this to be "Hellraiser 3 Hell on Earth" bad but it was merely "Hellraiser 4 Bloodline" bad. The pre-credits intro had so much exposition in it, it was like we were looking at a slurry made of pulped previous drafts of the script.

• Talamasca (2025):
  I mean, it wasn't terrible? Not as good as Interview, not as dreadful as Mayfair. Utterly forgettable protagonist. It's basically Three Days of the Vampire. Half the dialog is Forgettable Boy saying things like "Wait, ghosts are real??"

• The Ick (2025):
  It's your basic Night of the Creeps / The Blob, in a world where all the dumbasses would inject bleach and claim it was the Deep State. Pretty entertaining. Terrible effects.

• Nothing Sacred (1937):
  Absolutely classic Screwball. Girl should have had radium poisoning, can't admit she's fine, becomes a NY celebrity deathwatch. Technicolor in 1939!

• Caught Stealing (2025):
  A perfectly acceptable dirtbags-running-from-the-mob movie.

• Freakier Friday (2025):
  This was so, so stupid, but also pretty funny.

• Killing Mary Sue (2025):
  Dad is trying to murder his shithead party-girl daughter, who can't figure out that this is happening, and who is apparently immortal via the cleansing power of stupidity. It's pretty funny.

• Dracula, A Love Tale (2025):
  At first I thought this was just going to be a remake of Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, of which I am not a fan, because it is doing that dumb reincarnation plot which was in neither the novel nor in Nosferatu. Maybe it first appeared in one of the Christopher Lee movies? I can't remember. Anyway, it's not that! This movie is great! The vampires are gleefully unhinged and sexy in a Night Teeth way, there are some inexplicable dance routines, and Dracula's primary superpower is that he smells really nice, I am not even kidding. There are also claymation-esque gargoyle sidekicks which have to be an intentional reference to Subspecies, they have to be.

  Side note, I had a 30 minute argument with Dr. Kingfish about this movie and how I loved it but he thought it was a boring re-tread snore, and eventually I figured out that we were arguing about completely different 2025 Dracula movies -- he thought we were talking about the Eggers Nosferatu, which I agree, was a complete snore. I didn't make it 30 minutes into that one. Likewise, the Del Toro Frankenstein lost me by minute 15. Zero fucks to give about Little Lord Fauntleroy-Frankenstein and his hard childhood and Sad Dad.

• Abraham's Boys (2025):
  Dr. Van Helsing married Mina (!!) and moved to the California Central Valley. Their sons do not want to join the family business. It's actually just a "bad dad" story, but I'm going to include it on my "maybe worth watching" list just because it is such a radical departure from the usual fare of Dracula sequels (like that one that was about actuarial paperwork or whatever.)

• Down Cemetery Road (2025):
  Reluctant suburbanite plays detective to rescue the MacGuffin. The plot is on rails, but it has good characters.

• The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973):
  CIA hires a token black man, trains him, and then has him run the copier for five years. He quits, moves back to Chicago, and starts an insurrection, turning street gangs into the Viet Cong and murdering cops. Apparently this didn't get a real release back in the day for some reason but it's great!

• Stone Cold Fox (2025):
  Some dirtbags dirtbag. I am always here to watch Krysten Ritter chew the scenery, and this is definitely that.

• Rabbit Trap (2025):
  In the 70s, a couple go to the Welsh countryside to do field recordings for what sounds like a Chris & Cosey album, discover the secret brown note of faerie rings, and then things get weird. It's a bit slow but pretty great. "Folk horror" is not generally my jam but I liked this one a lot.

• Keeper (2025):
  Tatiana Maslany (who is always awesome) goes away to a cabin in the woods with her boyfriend, and you assume he's gonna try to murder her, which of course he is, but it's way weirder than that and pretty great.

• Man Finds Tape (2025):
  This is a found-footage / documentary-style copypasta kind of thing, and it's ok. I almost bailed 5 minutes in when I realized that's what it was, because I think the Blair Witch both opened and closed the book on found-footage, and generally my opinion has been that everything since has just been a lazy attempt to use that format to cover for a lack of budget. I never want to see a "Zoom" movie again as long as I live. Anyway, even given my low opinion of the format, I made it to the end of this and it was alright. The actual mythology they unspool is interesting. I wish it had been a "real" movie, though.

• Kill Bill, The Lost Chapter, Yuki's Revenge (2025):
  Well I say god damn. That was just a delightful little snack. (Making of).

• Good Fortune (2025):
  Keanu is a guardian angel who is an idiot. You should already be sold on this.

• Eternity (2025):
  The Good Place but with less ethics lessons and more Hallmark romcom. It was funny.

• Xeno (2025):
  Friendless nerdy girl who has pet spiders and snakes adopts a stray puppy and hides it in her basement, except the puppy is a Xenomorph. Predictable but fun.

• Spinal Tap 2 (2026):
  This is a thing that happened that should not have.

• Fallout (season whatever):
  This is bad. Nobody who isn't watching this out of nostalgia for a video game they used to play can possibly think that this is not bad.

• Okja (2017):
  Korean farm girl tries to save her giant genetically engineered pig from the corporation that designed it. It's part Totoro and part Babe, with a dash of Cohen-esque "all these people are idiots". Pretty fun.

• Predator Badlands (2025):
  In this wacky timeline, "The Elle Fanning Predator movie is fantastic" is a thing that I say. Prey was better, but this has great comedy and, ya know, heart. It has fambly. It has daddy issues. (And Mu/th/r issues.) So yeah they also rub some Weyland-Yutani on it, which means that even though all right-thinking people disavow the existence of the Alien vs. Predator movies, this is still a better Alien sequel than Alien Earth.

  Also after you've watched it, the spoileriffic Corridor Crew episode about the effects is pretty great.

• Rental Family (2025):
  A company of actors that hires themselves out as a "make a wish" kind of thing to sad people. It is both creepy and surprisingly sweet. Japanese, but mostly in English.

• Miss Scarlet And The Duke (2020):
  Victorian lady private detective. It is soap opera popcorn fun. It does violate my admonition against shows about doctors, lawyers or cops, but I enjoyed it anyway.

  (Like all such shows it is set in 1890-ish, and they are at least paying lip service to correct fashion, like, Detective Grumpy has sleeve garters even though his shirt is perfectly fitted. BUT Scarlet's dress has full sized modern pockets, and they show her using them all the time, but do not hang a lantern on it.)

• Dust Bunny (2025):
  Little girl hires the assassin next door to take care of the monster rabbit under her bed. Which is pretty good so far! But it's way more interesting than that, because it's hard to tell what is real and what is a dream and the set design is Susperia-esque and I do not bandy that comparison about lightly. This is absolutely fantastic.

• Starfleet Academy (2026):
  We are only 3 episodes in and already this is, without a doubt, the second worst Star Trek show of all time. Only Section 31 has been worse, and I am including in that assessment the rock-bottom outings of Prodigy, Enterprise and Voyager. I kinda don't hate Holly Hunter, Fake Teen Mia Goth or Fake Teen Anne Hathaway, but every other character is either despicable or I have already forgotten them entirely. Is hologram girl only in the show because there's a studio note that every Star Trek show has to have a Wesley or a Data as a lightning rod of hate to draw attention away from the terrible writing and acting of every other character? (I mean, the Betazoids were only the fourth most irritating thing on TNG.) Also, the entire show is plots about how main characters hate each other. Roddenberry would have hated this.

  Also also, setting any Trek show in the post-Burn-iverse is an unforced error. Nobody gives a shit about that world. It's awful. Disregard it.

  They missed the good lesson of DS9, "We stay here, the galaxy comes to us", and instead of Academy focusing on life in San Francisco (as seen from Sausalito) they made the whole school be a ship so they will presumably be doing away missions with entirely unqualified staff. Wow, I can't wait.

  Such laziness: It's like a thousand years in the future, NCC numbers are like 6 or 7 digits, but every name on the wall of fame is somehow someone who's been in a show that we've seen.

  For some reason "Starfleet Academy" and "War College" are in the same building and for some reason they are instructed to hate each other, but I don't actually know the difference between them except that one of them have black uniforms, so I assume these are like a Harry Potter sorting hat situation? I have zero fucks here.

  Underwear locker room scene. And they don't even have decon gel.

  Trash, it's all trash. It's the CW Network version of Star Trek. It's Gossip Girl Trek.

  I was excited to see Brit Marling in the credits but she's just the computer voice, instead of the Majel Barrett impersonator they have been using for decades.

Previously.

The Geneva Convention disintegrated. The Founding Fathers wept. Somewhere, a federal HR manager clutched their chest and whispered, "No. Not like this." [...]

Across the barricades stood a row of cops in riot gear. Helmets. Batons. Armor. Gas masks. High-vis jackets. The full authoritarian cosplay kit. They looked like they were guarding nuclear launch codes. They were guarding a hotel lobby full of ICE agents who were about to be spiritually obliterated by a box of clearance-bin dicks.

We opened the box.

The first dildo flew through the air like a rubber prophecy and skidded to a stop directly at the boots of a state trooper.

And that's when the United States government lost its entire fucking mind.

Before anyone could even laugh properly, before a second dildo could achieve liftoff, before reality had time to process the absurdity of what had just happened, the cops panicked like Victorian men seeing an ankle.

Tear gas.

Pepper balls.

Instant chaos.

The very first rubber dick to touch government-issued leather boots triggered a full-blown chemical weapons response. That is not metaphor. That is not exaggeration. That is a literal sentence that happened in America in 2026. [...]

ICE agents peeked out of hotel windows like scared children witnessing a public execution, except the execution was their dignity and the executioner was a $5 clearance dildo. Arianne was still smiling -- not because it was funny, not because it was cute, but because she knew, in her bones, that we had just cracked reality in half.

We didn't even get to the full distribution phase before they freaked out. The mere presence of one dildo at their feet was enough to trigger chemical weapons. That's how paper-thin their authority is. That's how little it takes to make them go full riot-cop meltdown mode. [...]

We proved that you can bring a trillion-dollar security apparatus to its knees with one well-aimed rubber cock.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Here, have a photo dump:

House of Harm

Halou + Vice Reine

AniClover

Micro Mania Wrestling

After Life

Big Top Burlesque

Death Guild

Black Flag

WASHINGTON -- In a statement calling for more guardrails around ongoing immigration operations, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives publicly condemned Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thursday for routinely employing fatal use of force without obtaining the proper warrants. "For weeks, Democrats have pushed to require ICE agents to obtain the necessary judicial warrants ahead of any murders they plan to commit," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a joint statement on the current Homeland Security funding bill, which would allocate $500 million to developing "common sense" accountability measures for any extrajudicial killings carried out at the behest of the federal government.

"It is vital that the Department of Homeland Security uphold the rule of law when indiscriminately gunning down innocent civilians in the street; otherwise, the whole system could fall apart. Rather than doing things by the book, these officers are out there slaughtering everyday Americans without first filing the proper paperwork with the appropriate agencies. Our framework is designed to ensure that ICE conducts itself like every other law enforcement agency in the nation, enacting violence upon our populace with impunity and without consequence." Jeffries added that he empathized with immigrant communities who live in fear knowing that at any moment they could be killed without administrative due diligence.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Anyway, one good thing that has happened is that, after nearly six months of investigation, someone who is much better than I am at reading tcpdump logs has finally figured out why the video webcast kept stalling all the time. So now you should be able to watch it for hours at a time without it rebuffering, instead of minutes, which is where we had been for a while.

Our uplink from the club is MonkeyBrains, who are wireless, because nobody will sell me a fiber link. And everything about wireless is trash and always has been.

When using RTSP or RTMP for video transport, there was an unusually high number of lost and reordered packets. These are hallmarks of a wireless network (thanks again, MonkeyBrains), but they only seemed to show up under load; meaning that you can't see the problem using mtr, speedtest, or iperf3, all of which showed 0% loss. All of the testing apps send a bunch of evenly-spaced packets of the same size, but the stream sends unpredictable bursts (because of MPEG keyframes) that lead to loss, and eventually those (successful) retransmissions kill TCP throughput. Then the video stalls.

So the fix was to switch to SRT ("Secure Reliable Transport", not to be confused with "SubRip subtitles"), which is a UDP protocol that implements its own TCP-like retransmission within a limited window, and with bandwidth smoothing. This avoids the bursting we were seeing when RTSP would blast out many large packets at once.

It took so long to figure this out, because none of the obvious tools were indicating that anything was wrong, even though your lying eyes saw the video crapping out all the time.

"Why don't you fix the stupid webcast already?" Because it's fuckin' hard, dude.

Oh yeah, also I got the payphone working again. Critical stuff here.

Anyway, come see Black Flag tonight. Is fun band, you like.

Previously, previously, previously.